waiting

I have a dream. And for 45 years, I’ve been waiting on that dream to show up in my life.

Yesterday, I walked to my little town’s movie theater to watch The 2nd Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I’ll admit it wasn’t as good as the first, even with Richard Gere in it, but the wedding scene made it worth the cash. The wedding scene is exuberant, joyful, full of dancing, and so much dang fun. It puts a smile on your face. It was the best part of the movie because the main character, Sonny, does it again. He figures out his dilemma, gets out of his own way, and makes a pretty great comeback.

The movie works because each character has a dream, a yearning, but while they stall, ponder, wait, agonize, and worry (you’re thinking, you’re not getting any younger here), Sonny’s passion, youth and desire is juxtaposed against these characters who have lived long enough to lose a few dreams. They know, not all dreams come true. It’s easy to understand their hesitancy to dive back in.

Where do you go when your dreams don’t come true? What’s next?

The movie ends happily, of course, with everyone getting some traction beneath them, and moving toward their new dream. Relationships, jobs, marriage, not-marriage. Death is certain, they learn, but so is life. There is no time like the Present Time.

Of course, that’s all movie-talk, and we all can’t look like Judi Dench with her super-cute haircut, silver-grey hair and blue eyes.

But, we can all dream.

I know this guy who lives with his girlfriend. They’ve lived together 20+ years. She’s always wanted to get married. He never has. When I asked him why (because truly no two people were ever more compatible), he said he was waiting on the girl of his dreams. Oh, don’t get him wrong, he likes his live-in girlfriend, she is loads of fun, and a real nice girl, but she isn’t the one. He went on to describe the one, every man’s dream–tall, blonde, buxom, and gorgeous–and said when he found her, he’d marry her. (Okay, a little silly on his part, the eye-candy-wife, and we could easily argue that he’d already found the one in his brunette, non-buxom, short girlfriend, but that’s not the point.) My conversation with him was 20+ years ago, and I asked him, “Do you think that blonde, buxom and gorgeous girl is going to come knocking on your door while you’re living with another woman?”

I can be blunt and a bit tactless.

Listen, if we skip all the he was using the girlfrienduntil he found the wife conversation/judgment, and just let him talk, here’s what we might hear: Maybe, he is afraid of finding the woman of his dreams. So instead, he settles for what he doesn’t care if he loses, and hides behind their apartment door. If he was more like Sonny, he’d be the one knocking on doors until he found the one. May we all be more like Sonny.

My take-away from The 2nd Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: The dream may never present itself. You may need to go looking for it.